Morris leads Impi a merry dance in T20 opener

wicket, a catch and producing a magnificent throw from the boundary to run out the Impi’s most important player, Paul Collingwood.

When Morris arrived at the crease, the Lions were 108/7 having badly lost their way through the middle of the innings. He took on the Impi bowlers with some belligerent hitting, slamming two sixes and three fours in his knock.

In Shane Burger he found a composed partner, and their unbeaten stand of 45 for the eighth wicket ultimately proved the difference between the two sides.

Their spirits lifted by Morris’s late innings heroics, a boisterous Lions team then got among the Impi, with Morris and especially Ethan O’reilly bowling aggressively restricting them to 11/3 in five overs. In fact, O’reilly eventually finished with 2/4 in his four overs, the best bowling in the domestic T20 format, while Morris finished with 1/15.

The experimental seventh team never recovered from that calamitous start and with Morris getting in a direct hit with a bullet-like throw from the boundary to dismiss Collingwood for four in the eighth over, the Impi’s chances disintegrated at 22/4.

Earlier, there was a strange innings from the Lions with coach Dave Nosworthy expressing bemusement at his side’s batting in the first six overs. Jonathan Vandiar wanted to slog every ball, as did Quinton de Kock and skipper Alviro Pe- tersen.

At 39/2, after being put in to bat, they needed some normality, provided by veteran Neil Mckenzie. His sensible approach rubbed off on Petersen and the pair combined for a 50run stand in seven overs, with both for the most part employing conventional stroke-play.

Mckenzie’s was a typically classy knock with deft deflec- tions to third man, excellent driving over the cover region and controlled pulling through the legside.

While there might be some criticism of the shot which led to his dismissal – an attempt to lift the ball over short fine leg – the shot was certainly on and if he’d gotten more elevation, he’d have picked up a boundary.

Nevertheless, his innings of 30 with five fours was a valuable one and should have provided the platform for the middle order to launch towards a big total.

Instead, the Lions fell apart, losing five wickets in 23 balls for 19 runs, including Petersen stumped by Ryan Canning off Wester n Province’s left-ar m spinner Siya Simetu for 37 (36b 4x4, 1x6).

It took Morris’s late-innings blitz to take the puff out of the Impi and provide the Lions with a competitive and ultimately victorious total.